American Warlord Read Online Free

children and guns, and in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Pine Hills became a front line in this crisis. 10 In one incident, two ten-year-old children and a twelve-year-old were arrested for breaking into a home and attempting to steal shotguns. In another, a Pine Hills homeowner was surprised when a barbecue was hurled through his front window; moments later teens in ski masks stormed the house. Before the homeowner could stop them, a teen opened fire, shooting him in the thigh. One of Chucky’s neighbors, a seventeen-year-old boy, was shot twice in the back as he left a local fair by two teens who peppered his car with 9mm and .45-caliber pistols.
    On the night of February 25, 1994, nearly a year and half after he first met Lynn, Chucky got his hands on a .38 automatic pistol. 11 He walked along North Pine Hills Road with two friends, seventeen-year-old Daniel Dasque and Philip Jackson, a twenty-one-year-old who had been arrested two years earlier after leading Orange County sheriff’s deputies on a high-speed chase through Pine Hills. The young men made their way past the one-story Eglise Baptiste Philadelphie Church, toward the Indialantic Drive intersection. Chucky wore a red sweatshirt and black baseball cap. Tucked into his pants was the pistol. He was not the only one armed, according to a police report; either Jackson or Dasque held a concealed stock barrel .410-gauge shotgun.
    At around eight-thirty p.m., the trio spotted a lone teenager walking toward them. Steven Klimkowski had grown up nearby but did not know Chucky or his friends. He had only just stepped out of his house. Within moments, Dasque confronted him and demanded money. Klimkowski replied that he didn’t have any.
    “Yes, you do,” Dasque responded.
    Klimkowski tried to brush past the group, but Chucky and his friends set upon him. He broke free and bolted to his house, just eight doors down the street. The trio chased the teenager to his lawn, where he yelled out for help to his father.
    When Robert Klimkowski stepped onto his lawn, a terrifying scene came into view: three young men were accosting his son, one of them armed. At the sight of the boy’s father, Chucky and his friends bolted down the street. Father and son immediately gave chase. Chucky stopped in his tracks and turned on the Klimkowskis. He flashed his .38 and leveled it at Robert Klimkowski’s head.
    Klimkowski, who is white, referred to the incident as the time “the black guy pulled a gun out on me.” 12 Years later he recalled Chucky saying to him, “What’re you going to do about it?”
    Chucky then turned the weapon toward Steven Klimkowski’s head.
    Chucky’s accomplice Philip Jackson had stopped to egg him on, according to the police report, crying, “Shoot him! Shoot him!”
    Steven backed away, saying, “I ain’t doin’ nothin.”
    Chucky didn’t pull the trigger. Instead he let his pistol arm drop to his side, then turned to run off into the night with his friends. They didn’t get far. The trio attempted to hide out at a friend’s house, a few doors from the scene of the crime, but the police easily tracked them. When they placed Chucky under arrest, he still had the .38 in his possession.
    The state’s attorney charged him with four felonies: two counts of aggravated assault with a firearm, one count of attempted robbery, and possession of a firearm in commission of a felony. Bernice had to post bail to secure her son’s release pending a trial, which was scheduled for August. For the first time in his juvenile criminal career, Chucky was looking at real jail time.
    The house arrest, the suicide attempt, and now a potential jail term—Chucky’s latest arrest marked a turning point for Bernice. She had grown resigned to the fact that she could no longer control her son. But now his behavior had become more than just a threat to himself and his future—it had become a threat to other people. All she had to do was turn on the nightly news or look in